?'

Lily nodded and smiled, and the tune moved on, conjuring up its pictured
reverie. Those review days were grand things when little Lily was a
child--magnanimous expenditure of hair and gunpowder was there. There
sat General Chattesworth, behind his guns, which were now blazing away
like fun, wearing his full uniform, point cravat and ruffles, and that
dignified and somewhat stern aspect which he put on with the rest of his
review-day costume, bestriding his cream-coloured charger, Bombardier,
and his plume and powdered _ails de pigeon_, hardly distinguishable from
the smoke which enveloped him, as a cloud does a demigod in an
allegorical picture.

Chord after chord brought up all this moving pageant, unseen by Sally's
dim old eyes, before the saddened gaze of little Lily, whose life was
growing to a retrospect. She stood in the sunny street, again a little
child, holding old Sally by the hand, on a soft summer day. The sentries
presented arms, and the corps marched out resplendent. Old General
Chattesworth, as proud as Lucifer, on Bombardier, who nods and champs,
prancing and curvetting, to the admiration of the women; but at heart
the mildest of quadrupeds, though passing, like an impostor as he was,
for a devil incarnate; the band thundering melodiously that dashing
plaintive march, and exhilarating and firing the souls of all
Chapelizod. Up went the windows all along the street, the rabble-rout of
boys yelled and huzzaed like mad. The maids popped their mob-caps out of
the attics, and giggled, and hung out at the risk of their necks. The
serving men ran out on the hall-door steps. The village roues emerged in
haste from their public houses. The whole scene round and along from top
to bottom, was grinning and agape. Nature seemed to brighten up at sight
of them; and the sun himself came out all in his best, with an
unparalleled effulgence.

Yes, the town was proud of its corps, and well it might. As gun after
gun, with its complement of men and its lieutenant fireworkers, with a
'right wheel,' rolled out of the gate upon the broad street, not a soul
could look upon the lengthening pageant of blue and scarlet, with its
symmetrical diagonals of snowy belt and long-flapped white cartouche
boxes, moving together with measured swing; its laced cocked-hats,
leggings, and courtly white shorts and vests, and ruffles, and all its
buttons and brasses flashing up to the sun, without allowing it was a
fine spirited sight.